Top in Fiction Week #14
Week of Oct 5 - Oct 11 | TiF Ambassador Edition | Vol. 1 Iss. 14
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MICRO/FLASH FICTION
Waiting - 10/9/24 [Art Fiction]
Feasts and Fables of Just Write, Right
A Barred Owl in the Infinite Darkness of the Maine Woods - 10/8/24 [Literary Fiction]
Dr. Kathleen Waller of The Matterhorn: truth in fiction
SHORT STORY
Eggitude Probing (Part 1 of 2) - 10/7/24 [Speculative Fiction]
A.P. Murphy of The Strangeness Kit
Eggitude Probing (Part 2/Finale) - 10/8/24 [Speculative Fiction]
A.P. Murphy of The Strangeness Kit
Detroit Morning - 10/9/24 [Literary Fiction]
Thomas Foydel of False Choices
Wildcatter - 10/8/24 [Sci-Fi]
Karl Gallagher of Karl K. Gallagher’s Stories
Roko's Lathe™ - 10/7/24 [Sci-Fi]
M.P. Fitzgerald - Graphomania of Graphomania with M.P. Fitzgerald
UNFILTERED - 10/5/24 [Comedy]
Harsh Munjal of Almost Fiction
Domesticated - 10/5/24 [Horror]
Jimmy Gardner of Clean Chaos
Always, whenever I look at you - 10/10/24 [Speculative Fiction]
Nathan Slake of SLAKE
Where God Once Lay - 10/9/24 [Horror]
Keith Loser of Loser’s Fiction
SERIAL
Bunny ears, bunny ears [Dry Bread Ain’t Greasy, Ch. I] - 10/5/24 [Neo-Western]
Remi K. Chevalier of Dry Bread Ain’t Greasy
Beware the Darkness [Child of Light, Ch. 4] - 10/9/24 [Fantasy]
Diana Hannay of Fickle & Whimsy
Fallout 30 - 10/6/24 [Literary Fiction]
Eleanor Anstruther of The Literary Obsessive
Gifts [The Consilience Series, Ch. 8] - 10/7/24 [Speculative Fiction]
Johnathan Reid of The Consilience Series
HONORABLE MENTIONS
The Neighbor [things that can't be broken, Ch. 5] - 10/5/24 [Literary Fiction]
Shannon W Haynes of Chapter by Chapter [Serial]
THE DISHES - 10/9/24 [Satire]
Camila Hamel of Helium Voices [Comic]
The Shaman [Part 1 of 3] - 10/5/24 [Speculative Fiction]
P. E. Rempel of Fiction by P. E. Rempel [Short Story]
Déjà Vu Dinner [The Adventures of Seeker and the Serpents, Ch. 1] - 10/8/24 [Sci-Fi]
August Niehaus of August Writes Books [Serial]
Road [Quibble, Ch. 26] - 10/10/24 [Sci-Fi]
Joshua Lavender of Singular Dream [Serial]
Thanks, Erica, for the invitation to step in your shoes and select today’s Top In Fiction. I read for hours until I got a stiff neck. Margaret Atwood was right when she said writers should care for their backs. It does catch up with you. Besides a stiff neck, I gained a new respect for Erica’s work here every week for the fiction community. I went through all of the 30 entries in Friday’s thread. More than half of those entries were thousands of words long!
It felt like a treat to take several hours and read such a diverse collection of stories in various genres written by authors with such diverse and original voices. As a reader, I don’t have any preference for a particular type of literature or speculative fiction, I’ve read widely in my life, and I like variety. Therefore, my main criterion for selecting each piece was the immersion factor. Immersion can be created through a variety of writer tools and devices. For example, the tension Diana Hannay built in her novel chapter kept me glued to the page, wanting to know what happened next. The funny revelations of what dogs think about their owners made me want to read more of Harsh Munjal’s Unfiltered. The strange, witty and highly creative piece of A.P. Murphy’s Eggitude Probing was exhilarating. Thomas Foydel’s Detroit Morning and Keith Loser’s Anthology Short: Where God Once captivated me with their fantastic prose.
Another point worth mentioning as a reader is being allowed to jump directly into the story without any background information or exposition. The experience of being thrown into the unknown with the characters and having to figure out the puzzle on my own, bit by bit, is immensely satisfying. As writers, we should trust that the reader is smart enough to figure things out. This is a lesson I’ll remember when writing my own fiction.
Reading your work was a pleasure, and I’m looking forward to more fiction!
— Claudia Befu of Story Voyager
TiF EXTRAS
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We’ll be back next Monday for another amazing list of fiction stories worth reading! And if you enjoyed any of these stories, please consider sharing this post everywhere:
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Thank you so much for the time you dedicated to TiF this week and your kind words, Claudia! I've mentioned it before but it deserves mentioning again, it's a true honor being featured among such wonderfully talented writers!
Great choices, Claudia! Thanks for carrying the banner for fiction on Substack.